


The Somerton Man

by Usedtobehmc



Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: Language Barrier, Pre-Canon, young mercs
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-14
Updated: 2016-09-08
Packaged: 2018-05-01 12:55:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5206643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Usedtobehmc/pseuds/Usedtobehmc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Micky is 19 and finds a massively dehydrated man passed out in the middle of the Australian outback.  It won't be the strangest part of the trip.  </p><p>*Inspired by a prompt from mister-stalker on tumblr*</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Choice

 (Illustration by the masterful [mister-stalker](http://mister-stalker.tumblr.com/))

 

**2nd of December, 1948:**

 

 

It occurred to Micky that there may definitely be something wrong with him.  

 

He’d always suspected growing up that he was fundamentally different from your average person.Not just from your average Australian.He seemed immune to Australium in all it’s forms: he never put on muscle, never grew ridiculously shaped chest-hair, never fancied a fist-fight over a camping trip…in that way he was different from his countrymen, yes.

 

But as he seriously debated leaving the unconscious man in the dirt and letting him perish rather than interacting with another human, he realized that his strange personality was a bit darker than the “quirks” his mother had always attributed it to.Maybe his dad was right.Maybe he was crazy.A sane bloke would be falling over himself to help a fellow human in dire straits.  

 

He stood motionless and regarded the passed-out man, listening to the sounds of the wind howling past his ears.Not a lot of animals in these parts.Not a lot of anything unless you really knew where to look.Which Micky did, which is why he was out here.Honestly, he was real fuckin’ confused as to how an obviously unprepared man could even make it out this far without being extremely dead.  

 

The way the man was dressed made it clear that he definitely had not planned on ending up way out here in the bush.Nice shirt, dress slacks, shoes that were once shiny and posh and not meant for hiking.Trouble with the mob?They’d been known to drop a poor sucker out in the wild and let the snakes sort it out.No tire tracks nearby.But the man could have tried to walk to civilization and gotten lost.Easy to do if you don’t know what you’re doing. 

 

Micky shook his head and kicked a rock. _City folk…can’t tell North from their own ass_.  

 

The man was thin, probably tall from the looks of those legs, and good-looking.Fingernails were dirty but not broken or chewed up, and the beginning of a very bad sunburn was the only thing marring the smooth skin of his face.His hair was messy and drenched with sweat, plastered across his forehead in a slick black tangle.Clearly not an Australian.Didn’t even have a mustache.Had a vaguely European look about him, but Micky couldn’t put his finger on exactly what made him think that.Probably the suit.  

 

He didn’t ask for this trouble, he didn’t want a charity case.Now he was going to derail his camping trip halfway through because some stranger was mixed up in something that wasn’t any of his business?He’d have to get this guy back to civilization.He’d have to feed him and keep him hydrated and keep him from getting himself killed.And even if they made it, what if word got back to whoever had put him out here in the first place?He didn’t want the bloody mafia coming after him… or his parents.  

 

Bugger.  

 

Dropping his rucksack, he knelt next to the barely-breathing man in the dirt and slapped at his cheeks.“Oi mate.Still kickin’?”He turned the man over onto his back and cradled his head, leaning over to block the sun from the stranger’s eyes.“C’mon then, give us a blink.”

 

A sound of sun-baked agony came crackling from behind the broken lips.His eyelids clenched, but did not open.  

 

Micky grunted.Best thing would be to get him out of the sun, but his camp was at least a kilometer away.Still, he doubted this guy would be in any condition to walk anywhere, even if he could get him to wake up.  

 

Micky yanked the man up and hauled those gangly limbs over his shoulders until he had a decent fireman’s carry going.It was going to be a long trip back to camp.He just hoped he wasn’t going to be carrying a corpse by the time he got there.Lot of bloody fuss…

 

 

 

 

....

 


	2. Fire

 

 

Heat.  

 

All-consuming, fiery heat and it was in his head… in his heart, his stomach, his feet.The flames licked at his eyeballs and fingertips and his head pounded and throbbed.He felt an all-consuming need to vomit, but his rolling stomach had nothing to offer.  

 

His skin felt dry, cracked, too tight, ready to flake and fall away and leave him skinless in the unforgiving sun where he’d be cooked to a crisp.  

 

There was a voice that didn’t belong to his racing thoughts, and it cut through the screaming in his head like a streak of blue relief.He couldn’t make out the words: everything was too fuzzy.His ears were cotton, his eyes were cotton, his mouth was cotton.

 

Water… he needed water.  

 

Cool droplets, like the touch of God sprinkled his lips and slid onto his tongue.They didn’t make it much further, it seemed that every cell in his body screamed selfishly for moisture and his tongue and lips leapt to steal it before it could even reach his throat.  

 

He tried to lift his hand, to make a grab for more but his brain couldn’t even tell him where his hand was in space.He cried out, frustrated.The drops appeared again slowly… agonizingly slowly and he parted his lips as far as he could manage to accommodate them.  

 

The cool suddenly coated his forehead, beating back the fire there until it was only a dull roar.He felt that he could have cried in relief, if he’d had the water to spare for tears.  

 

Again and again, the cool came back for him, until his hair was slicked back, until he could feel the water beading on his face.And then, sheets of water seemed to lay themselves across his body and remain there, sapping the heat from his skin and bones.The droplets kept coming, and soon he was able to swallow, though it felt like knives sliding down his throat.  

 

He opened one eye and saw only blurry shapes.There was movement, though.This person had rescued him from the fire.  

 

Who would save him from the fire?Who would come for him?

 

“ _Lucien_?”Only a whisper, it was all he could manage.  

 

A voice, a voice he couldn’t understand, but a voice nonetheless answered him.The damn cotton in his ears prevented him from making out the words.  

 

“ _Lucien_.”  

 

He reached for him, what a relief it was to see him, to have him _back_.His hand landed on solid flesh.It was real then.It was real.  

 

Of course Lucien would come for him.

 

Fatigue crept up behind him from the dark recesses of his brain and he willingly succumbed to it’s embrace.Lucien would protect him.  

 

 

*********

 

The process of slowly getting water into this poor jerk took just under an hour, but at least he finally started to show signs of life.Looked plenty happy to be getting something to drink, that was for sure.

 

He must have been pretty delirious though, because towards the end, right before he passed out, he started calling Micky “Lucien.”  

 

Micky, obviously, didn’t know who Lucien was but he hoped the guy wouldn’t hold that against him.He continued to sprinkle water over the thin sheet covering the stranger in an attempt to lower his body temperature.Occasionally, he’d re-wet the towel over the man’s forehead, and drizzle a bit more water into his mouth.If he went to fast, the guy would toss up all the water and they’d be worse off than before.Luckily, all that water seemed to stay down until Micky had gone through his entire supply.  

 

Well, he’d have to go get some more water to boil now, seeing as how they’d gone through all of his supply.No sense in both of them going thirsty.Plus, they had a long trip back to where he’d left his camper van.That was their only real shot at making it out of the bush in one piece.  

 

There was a stream about an hour’s walk from his campsite, he reckoned he could make it there and back before his charge woke up.He double-checked his maps and equipment, took some food rations just in case, and set off for the stream, keeping his pace quick to cut down on the amount of time he’d be gone.It would be a much harder return trip, carting enough water to start them on their journey.  

 

He hoped the stranger had enough sense to stay put if he woke up: he’d hate to have to chase after him.  

 

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Any words in italics represent the foreign language to the person "narrating."

 

Micky had made pretty good time heading to the stream and back: crediting his fast-stepping to his unconscious charity case.It had taken him just a shade under two hours to get to the stream, fill four water jugs, tie two to each end of his walking stick and make his way back to his camp with the stick slung across his shoulders.It was hard going for the last leg of the trip, and he was a fair bit wrecked by the time he spotted his home base on the horizon.Eyeing the thin plume of smoke next to the small cluster of trees in the distance, he picked up his pace for the last leg of the journey, planning in his head how he would re-set the fire and get to boiling the water.He’d need something to drink as well quite soon to replenish everything he’d sweat out in the past two hours.Not to mention he was still a bit low from carting that unconscious bastard all the way there in the first place.  

 

At about two minutes away, he could see that the man was still under the damp sheet Micky’d left him under.But at the moment, the man had propped himself up on one elbow.  

 

He was still frozen in that position when Micky tromped into the campsite, letting his feet fall heavier than normal to warn the man ahead of time at his approach.No sense in spooking him by sneaking up.  

 

The man turned to face him with bleary eyes, head wobbling on his neck like he’d just had three pints too many.His mouth hung slightly open to accommodate the heavy breathing that was probably the only thing keeping this bloke from puking.  

 

Poor bugger was really hurting.  

 

Micky dropped the water jugs to the ground with a relieved sigh and set about rebuilding the fire into something respectable.Wiping his dripping brow with his sleeve, he glanced over at the stranger to try and get a read on his mood.The stranger just glanced around the campsite, taking in the supplies, the fire, the wet sheet draped over his torso and legs, the horizon. Micky figured he’d already let the silence drag on for too long, but how to break it… Was this guy even lucid yet?Probably not, and Micky smirked at the way the mans’ hair stood on end, mussed from sleep.  

 

“Right, mate?”  

 

The man blinked at him, trying to clear the fog in those sky-blue eyes.He slowly reached up and clutched at his forehead, probably trying to will away one motherfucker of a headache.Dehydration was nasty business and Micky did not envy him.  

 

“Gonna boil up some water, then we’ll get more in ya, ok?”

 

Micky swore he could hear sandpaper groaning, scraping and shifting out of the way as the man scrounged up his voice.It came out like a wrecked, dreid-out whisper.  

 

“ _Non_ … no... English.”

 

Micky’s shoulders slumped.  Perfect. 

 

He frowned in frustration and arranged the kindling in the fire pit to his liking to offset this unexpected news.If he was going to be babysitting this city-slicker, some pleasant conversation would have at least been welcome…. kind of.Not that he was fond of small-talk, but silence was really only comfortable when you were on your own.And now that that was ruined, well.Might as well go whole-hog.  

 

The matches made quick work of his expertly arranged twigs and soon a hearty fire burned.He glanced up from his work only briefly to see that the man was now sitting up and looking a hair more alert.They made brief eye-contact, and the stranger motioned to his throat while making a pained expression.  

 

“I know mate, workin’ on that right now.”He motioned towards the fire and retrieved an empty tin can.He filled it to the brim with water and set it right in the center of the hottest section of coals.Now, they just had to wait for it to boil.  

 

Micky sat on the ground with his legs crossed and stretched his shoulders, still stiff and sore from carting all that river water across the damn desert.Across the fire, the stranger had taken to dabbing his face with the barely-damp sheet, taking great pleasure in even the slightest amount of moisture still left there from his initial rescue.  

 

Micky cleared his throat.Well, they might as well get a few pesky introductions out of the way.He slapped his own chest lightly.“Micky.”He then pointed to the stranger with a raised eyebrow.  

 

The man squinted at the gesture, then a slow realization spread across his face.He touched his own chest.“Jacques.”  

 

********

 

Jacques sipped gratefully at his canteen of freshly-purified water and fought the urge to moan in pleasure as every gulp soothed his burning insides.His rescuer had made it clear, somehow through hand gestures, that drinking it slowly was the preferred method of treating extreme dehydration.From the foreboding churn in his gut, Jacques knew that it must be true.There was the threat of spectacularly painful vomiting looming over his head, even as the headache improved.He would pace himself.Take small sips.Slow and steady.  

 

The crushing, childlike disappointment that Lucien had not in fact appeared to rescue him was pushed to the back of his mind.The sun had clearly boiled his brain within his skull.Hopefully, enough brain cells would be spared that he’d make it out of this country with his sanity in tact.  

 

His rescuer, Micky, seemed like an unassuming sort.Simple.Outdoorsy.Rough around the edges, yet kind enough not to let him perish gasping in the sand like a beached fish.Young, tall, rangy in stature, carried himself in a way that illustrated he was not intimidated by the vast openness and danger of the wilderness.He built a fire like it was breathing.He tended the campsite like he’d been there all his life.Had he?Jacques would believe anything right now. 

 

They had no common language between them even though Jacques himself spoke three.Unfortunately, those three were French, German and Yiddish.His life’s to-do list had always included “learn English” but he’d been so swept up in the agency’s doings and striking out on missions that he hadn’t had time to pick any up.Sometimes he could catch enough in passing to get the general idea of what random passers-by were talking about, but still… his comprehension didn’t go far.  

 

And this stranger spoke not a lick of anything besides heavily accented English.Seemed to be fairly adept with hand gestures though, funnily enough.

 

The hours passed.They now sat in the dirt next to each other, watching the fire purify their next batch of water and drawing symbols in the ground with a sharp stick, passing the hours as the sun started to set.  

 

Micky drew a number: 19.  

 

Jacques raised a brow at that.He looked a bit older than that.Micky saw the expression and laughed a good, clean laugh.He scratched at his chin, apparently blaming his older looks on the scruff that had grown in over the course of the day.  

 

Jacques took the stick and drew a number as well.22.  

 

Micky gave him an appraising look and then nodded as if to say, “you look it.”Jacques combed his fingers through his hair.  

 

They smoothed over the dirt and Micky drew an approximate shape of Australia at their feet.He stabbed at the near-center of the entire continent and said, “ _Home.Alice Springs_.”He enunciated the words clearly.

 

“Aluss Sprengs,” Jacques repeated.His artistic skills were not up to snuff, but turnabout was only fair.  His depiction of France came out looking like a drunken square, but it would have to do.He drew a line across the top to symbolize the Seine, and stabbed the stick where Paris would be.“Paris…”he said, unable to hide the regret in his voice.He hadn’t been home in quite some time.  

 

***********

 

Micky had dropped out of school at 14 and never looked back.It would be plenty fair to call him uneducated but he wasn’t stupid.And as often as he’d slept under a rock he didn’t live there: he knew what France had been through in recent years and the stranger’s face confirmed that he’d been very close to that action.And Jacques was pretty young, he would have been a teenager when the Nazis marched through.

 

He made a small, solemn noise.Slapped the stranger on the back.  

 

Maybe now was a good time to talk strategy.He took the stick back and motioned between the two of them and then at the campsite.Then he poked the stick at their general location on his improvised map.He had real maps in his rucksack, but he chose to keep things simple.Dragging the stick in a line straight south, he drew an ‘x’ to mark civilization and wrote ‘200km’ next to it.  

 

Apparently it was easily understood because Jacques seemed to deflate and bury his head in his hands.  

 

Micky shook his head.He had to teach this bloke English and find out how he’d gotten out this far in the first place.After turning over the numbers in his head, he drew a little sun, complete with beams of light and wrote 5 next to it.Jacques seemed to understand, mumbling what was definitely a curse under his breath.After a deep inhale, he nodded.“Okay.Yes.”

 

*********

 

Five days of travel.Could he make it that far in his state?

 

It appeared to be his only option.Go with his savior or… Indeed, there was no choice to be made.

 

“ _Okay.Yes_.”

 

And thus, all his knowledge of the English language was exhausted. 

 

 

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

The sun finally set and left them under a blanket of stars the likes of which Jacques had never seen in his 22 years. The lights of Paris had always drowned most of them out and he’d never been much of a stargazer to begin with.

But this… this was incredible. There was a terrific streak of luminescence down the middle of the sky where the stars were especially concentrated… and they were so bright. They twinkled, something he’d always attributed to romantic poetry and children’s books. It never occurred to him that stars could actually twinkle. He felt exhilarated. And small. And a bit like crying.

Coupled with the moon, the stars bathed the campsite in a gentle blue light as the fire slowly dwindled to embers. He envied Micky just a bit in that moment: he got to live out here in the peaceful silence, under the watchful eye of the heavens. Jacques would, hopefully, soon return to Europe: to a host of problems, war, poverty... and a life without Lucien.

His rescuer puttered around the site, cleaning tools, arranging supplies, bottling their fresh new supply of water and setting up a small tent next to a sleeping bag.

Jacques wasn’t sure his body would let him sleep, even though a profound weariness seemed to grip him right behind the eyes. His arms shook with fatigue and he didn’t know if his legs would even carry him the short distance to the sleeping bag Micky had so kindly set up for him.  

It was a good thing he wasn’t too proud to crawl. Sleep was calling and he would heed that call, no matter what.

As he gingerly moved his aching limbs towards the sweet embrace of the sleeping bag, cursing the pounding headache that had yet to abate, Micky gestured towards the tent, stopping Jacques in his tracks.

A questioning look from Jacques yielded the same results: Micky gestured towards the tent again, a mere tarp draped in netting that protected a sleeping mat inside. But it was shelter and would protect from bugs and the early morning sun.

For the second time in only a few minutes, Jacques felt like crying. He hadn’t expected this kind gesture (and he suspected heat stroke was making him a bit emotional). He reached out, took Micky’s hand, and held it to his forehead. He desperately tried to remember how to say “thank-you” in English but for some reason, even the simple phrases were beyond him. Perhaps he’d remember after a good night’s sleep. As of this moment, he could barely remember his primary language, let alone common phrases from a fourth.

Micky seemed a little flustered at the dramatic show of gratitude, but mumbled a few genial words and waved him into the tent again.

Jacques slipped between the tent flaps and collapsed on the sleeping mat. It was thin and it barely disguised the texture of the dirt beneath him, but it was no match for sleep, which swept over him almost the instant his head hit the mat.

 

*********

Once the campsite was properly tidied and secured, Micky got comfortable in his sleeping bag. With his arms thrown up over his head and a cool breeze rustling his hair, he felt his body become slow and quiet. In these moments before sleep, he always felt as though he was melting, and the earth beneath was catching him as he became the soil.

His thoughts wandered to the hidden parts of his brain and he thought about the way Jacques had taken his hand and brought it to his face.

No one had touched him that way… _tenderly_ , in a very long time.

He travelled back in time to his parents’ farm in Alice Springs. Remembered the way his mother would bandage his knees and elbows after a bad fall. Or the one time a sheep nipped him so bad on the hand that the whole thing bruised for a month. His mum had some cream that smelled funny but made his hand hurt a little less. He’d seen her do the same thing for his father a few times when he hurt himself.

His father had never given him so much as a clap on the shoulder in kindness.

He remembered being in school and one of the girls taking a liking to him. She found small ways to let him know; a quick smile just for him, listening intently when he answered her question about sheep herding, a gentle touch to his knee when they sat next to each other for lunch.

He liked that, even though it was absolutely terrifying at the time. Nothing ever came of it, but he looked back on those interactions fondly. They had been so innocent.

He remembered only a few years after that, sitting in a high school classroom and idly wishing that his friend Peter would touch his knee. The thought struck naturally and without any sort of prompting, and it very nearly sent him into a panic attack.

By the next year, Micky had dropped out of school to work on the farm full-time. His parents didn’t question the decision, and it was… safer.

Hard work, hard living, and survival didn’t offer many opportunities for touch from another person. It was a lonely life, but it was secure and consistent.

How had he gotten on this train of thought again?

Oh yes. The stranger had taken his hand. Touched it to his forehead in a gesture of thanks and Micky had briefly felt the too-dry skin of Jacques’ face and softness of his hairline.

Europeans had a reputation of being touchy-feely, didn’t they? Australians, at least the ones Micky had known his whole life, discouraged that sort of behavior. Wishy-washy, they called it.

In the distance, bugs chittered away and sang their songs. A breeze rustled through the campsite, the embers of the fire slowly cooled, and Micky’s eyes eventually closed.

*******

The fire returned but brought with it a different kind of pain. A black sort of pain that grabbed him by the throat and shook until his brain swelled and his eyeballs burned.

Lucien.

No Lucien, he was gone. There was only the black fire that came from within this time.

He was… so angry. And that anger had pulled him halfway around the world, over oceans and deserts and forests and tundras and places he’d never get to take Lucien to.

_Lucien. Lucien, I swear I’ll… LUCIEN._

He hollered into the darkness and the fire receded slowly, reluctantly. He wasn’t done screaming… he wasn’t done being angry, but the fire was gone and now… now it was time to rest…

**********

Waking up was substantially less painful this time around. It still took a herculean effort to open his eyes, but the stabbing agony of extreme dehydration was notably absent. The new daylight peeked in around the cover of the tarp and didn’t seem nearly as oppressive as it had yesterday.

Jacques was immediately aware of something clinging to his hand. He was more than a little shocked to find that it was another hand wrapped around his: tan, calloused, and strong. Carefully, he extracted his hand from the gentle clutches of the other and pulled the tarp back to peek. Sure enough, Micky lay there, closer to the tent than he had been when they’d first gone to bed: apparently asleep, but with his arm outstretched to reach under the flap of the tent.

His face turned bright red when Micky’s eyes slammed open and caught him staring. But his own embarrassment was slightly alleviated when the rugged Australian realized where his hand was and pulled it back to himself slowly. Micky murmured something that sounded like an apology and gave a one-shouldered shrug along with a sheepish half-grin.

Jacques’ look of utter confusion prompted more mumblings and hand gestures as Micky tried to explain what happened without the aid of a common language. Jacques couldn’t stop a sheepish smile of his own from forming as he tried to interpret the invented sign language.

You. Sleeping. Yelling. Yelling? Did he mean nightmare? Hand-holding. Sleeping.

Oh, good God.

********

Micky _hadn’t_ meant anything by it, honestly. It just… at the time… and clouded by the fog of sleep… seemed like the right thing to do. In the middle of the night he’d been woken up by these pitiful sounds coming from the little lean-to and when they kept happening, he’d done the only thing he could think of: he reached under the flap of the tent for Jacques’ hand.

To his credit, it _had_ worked. The soft touch had eased whatever worries the man held within his dream and he settled back into a blissful sleep.

And so had Micky, without removing his hand.

 

The sun rose higher and Jacques finally emerged from the tent when he heard the rustlings of Micky dismantling the campsite and packing it into his impossibly small backpack. Jacques took it upon himself to take his little sleeping tent down, rolling the mat and tarp into tight rolls that tied up nicely and were conveniently strung across his shoulders in a sling with the aid of some twine Micky gave to him. He felt a small twinge of pride to be carrying his own weight and went one step further by hooking the water pot to his belt.

Well. He was a veritable survivalist now. A regular Davy Crockett.

Micky hauled his definitely-more-substantial pack up onto his back and gave a hearty sigh as if to say, “Well, let’s get moving.”

Jacques nodded, his heart leaping up into his throat at the idea of surviving this terrible ordeal.

The idea of making it back to civilization.

The idea of getting away with everything he’d done.


End file.
